The Ice-Diving Robot That Could Look for Alien Life on Jupiter's Moon

The search for extraterrestrial life begins, often enough, on Earth. In this case, it's an Alaskan glacier, where the robot VALKYRIE is proving its ice-chomping abilities in a field test. VALKYRIE is supposed to one day land on Jupiter's moon, Europa, where it will drill through miles of ice to reach the liquid oceans that could harbour alien life.

New Scientist reporter Lisa Grossman was recently on hand to see VALKYRIE in action in Alaska. VALKYRIE doesn't drill through ice, like you might expect, but literally melts its way through. "The robot's burrowing strategy is to suck in water through valves in its nose, heat it internally and shoot it back out to melt a pocket in the ice that it can slide into," writes Grossman.

On the whole, the robot is a long, thin tube 1.6 metres tall 45 centimetres diameter. It melts a metre of ice a minute. Since this is only a test, the version that makes it to Europa will be bigger and faster. There's another key difference too: VALKYRIE was powered by a 5000-watt laser in the Alaska field test. On Europa, it'll likely have a small nuclear power source, eschewed here because of peace treaties that forbid nuclear-powered craft on ice.

A Europa mission is still many years off, but it's been gaining steam. NASA just recently put out a call forproposals on a scientific instruments for a Europa mission. It may be time to say it: move over, Mars. [New Scientist]